After the Ball
by Sylvia2
Summary: The mirrors are broken, and so is the Phantom's heart. An old friend has to pick up the mess Christine left behind. Mme. GiryErik are primary characters.


The shadows were deep and cold in the passageway behind the walls of his grotto. Outside, the mob was howling for his blood for the death of Piangi, the death of the opera house. He was an animal to them, a monster, a gargoyle, and deserving of no trial nor sentence other than a swift and brutal death.

Little did they know, he was already dead.

Hours passed, or perhaps days. Time had no meaning here. There was no day, no night, no marking of the passage of minutes save for the distant discomforts of his body. The mob had dispersed quickly, driven by the burning opera house above them and the fear that it might fall around their heads. No chance of that; it was too well constructed and they were too far below ground for the flames to reach. The frame of the Opera Populare would stand for centuries. It would be rebuilt, refurbished, renewed by new owners and the rafters would echo once more with music.

Here below, though, all was silent; the music was as dead as Erik's heart. He did not know how long he crouched in the darkness, huddled in on himself, his hands and body turning numb with cold as the rocks leached the warmth from his body. The candles outside had guttered and died long since, leaving not even shadows behind. His hands ached from clenching, and his eyes burned with the tears he had shed.

A tiny light fluttered at the end of the passage. "Erik?" Evelyn Giry called, her voice echoing against the stones and water. "Erik, are you here? Do you live yet, old friend?"

In the cold, in the dark, Erik smiled a wan smile. His lips formed the word 'no', but he did not give it breath.

The ballet mistress walked on light feet; he did not hear her approach until her voice came again, much nearer. "Erik, say something if you are here. Please. I am worried for you." The light was closer as well, flickering down the narrow corridor and glinting off of the damp stones. She had found the passage, but she did not see him in the shadows.

Perhaps he was not here. Perhaps he was a ghost even now, just one shade among the numerous dead in the catacombs beneath Paris. A ghost among ghosts. If he was silent and still, she would go and he could die in truth.

"Mon dieu, old fool! Come out of there." Ah. She had seen him at last.

Summoning his will and all his strength, Erik lifted his head and glared. "Go away, Madame. I do not desire company at present." His voice was harsh, a crow's caw, and barely above a whisper. The effort of speech cost him, and he dropped his head once more to his drawn up knees. "Let me be, Evie. I am tired."

There came a rustle of fabric and the candle flame wavered and drew near. He did not look up as she knelt beside him and placed a light hand on his back. "Oh, my dear friend," she murmured, her voice sad and kind. "The girl left with her lover?"

He could not give voice to the words, so he simply nodded.

She shifted until she was sitting beside him, her dark skirts falling in folds around his feet and hers. After seven years, she still wore the black of mourning. His own inky cloak was a kind of mourning as well, mourning for the life and love he could never have. It also made it easier to hide in the shadows and in the dark of night. Necessary colors for a phantom or ghost, or for a man doomed to hide from the eyes of men by an accident of birth.

Evelyn was a warmth at his side, her solid presence penetrating the cold which had seeped into his bones. "I am sorry for it. You love her very much."

The silence stretched between them and the candle wax melted in runnels down the stick before he spoke again. In a voice rusty as dried blood, he said, "I let them go. I thought to keep her jessed by threatening that damned young vicomte of hers, but I could not at the last. She could never soar with her soul torn between love and fear, and she would hate me for forcing the choice, however she chose." He ground the heel of his hands into his eyes, hiding in darkness once more, not wanting to see Mme. Giry's face. "I am such a fool. She could never love me for myself."

A distinctly unladylike snort sounded from the woman at his side. In surprise he looked up, forgetting that his face was bare to the light. "You never showed her yourself. How could she?" Evelyn said. She crossed her arms and met his gaze, not flinching at the now-familiar visage. "You hid in the shadows, playing on her needs and fears until she was half mad in love and half mad with fear of you. One does not love angels, Erik. One worships them. One reveres them. And then one grows up and marries the pretty, mundane, rich childhood sweetheart."

Erik stared at his old friend, hardly believing his ears. Tears were forgotten in his rising rage and it was all he could do not to strike her. "How dare you! I gave her everything! I gave her my music, my love. She betrayed me for that…that brash boy." He was on his feet and blazing down at her, his hair wild and falling into his eyes.

A smile danced in Evelyn's eyes and she climbed to her feet once more. "You gave her whispers in the dark and then you gave her threats and terror. I am surprised she did not leave sooner than she did. The only thing that kept her here was her youth and her love for you."

"Love? She never loved me."

"She did. Like a father, a teacher, a mentor. Your own fault that she never saw the man behind the mask."

Erik made an inarticulate sound of fury and pushed past Evelyn. He stalked back to his grotto and began righting candles and relighting them from a fallen torch someone had dropped. Evelyn joined him, tidying the debris away from the smashed mirrors and putting things to rights again. The silence grew between them again, tense with words unspoken.

At length Erik said, "How could I show her, Evie? I might have lost everything." His voice was quiet, bitter and sad. "She might love an angel. She would never love a monster. My own mother could not bear to look upon me." Hateful memory sprang up, smothering his voice. His beautiful mother, turning from him in disgust, pushing a mask into his hands. Pushing him away when he would kiss her. Counting the money as she walked away from his cage.

Gentle hands turned his head and he flinched from their touch. Hands, in his experience, had not been kind. These, however, were soft and warm as they moved his face into the light. Evelyn, her own face sad and older by a score and ten years or more since they had first met, looked at him without a shudder and without fear. "You are no monster," she said, and her voice was as soft as her hand. "You are merely a very ugly man." She regarded his face and smiled a fond smile. "You have lovely eyes, though. Have I never told you this? Well, I should have."

She smoothed back his tangled mane of russet hair, reaching up to do so, and he caught her wrist in a loose grasp. "I do not want your pity, Evie."

Her look changed to one of irritation. "I do not give it, idiot. I tell you plainly that you are a fool for trying to turn that girl's head into so much fromage. She was a silly little thing, but there was fire in her. If I can stand to look upon your face, she could have." With a tug, she freed her hand and put it on her hip. Erik was reminded that, no only had Mme. Giry raised a daughter on her own after her husband's death, but she managed to keep a score of ballerinas in line and en pointe. No mean task, either of them.

A little of Erik's rage faded, and he took a step back. "You knew me from my boyhood, Evie. How could I expect Christine…." his voice faded at the sound of her name on his lips. His heart was sore with the loss of her, and all of the fight went from him. She was gone, his angel, his muse, his love. All hope of love, gone. All hope of life, gone. Gone. The word sounded like a death-knell in his heart. Gone. Gone.

The candles were fading, and someone was leading him up the steps to his bedchamber. He crumpled into the swan's embrace with a sob and curled onto his side. Warmth covered him and one by one, the candles were put out. Darkness enfolded him once more and he slipped into its embrace. Let me not wake, he prayed with his last thought, and then gave himself over to his tears until sleep took him.

Drawing the curtains, Evelyn wiped her own eyes and sighed. Her heart was breaking along with his, for all her plain speech. Her dearest friend was suffering, and there was little she could do to help him save to be here when he woke and care for him as best he would let her. Her harsh words, her honest words had been an effort to shock him back into life. The spirit in his eyes had been her reward, until despair had claimed him once more with the conjuring of his lost love's name.

The grotto was soon put to rights, although she would not go into the alcove containing Christine's mannequin. It was altogether eerie, the way the doll's eyes followed her, and she finally had to draw the curtains over it simply to complete her self-appointed tasks. It was more than the doe-eyed stare of the thing that unnerved Evelyn, however. It was the fact of the thing's existence which worried her most. She had known of Erik's love for his young protégé, but she had thought it was a platonic thing and harmless. It was not until the arrival of the Vicomte de Chagny that she realized that his love had grown into something more, and it had worried her to no end. The girl was half his age, young enough to be his daughter, and loved her 'angel' as she had loved her father.

Evelyn had tried to talk to him, but 'the Phantom' proved too elusive even for her these last months. It was not her old friend who murdered Joseph Buquet, nor Piangi. It was a man mad with jealousy and obsession, and she feared that man as she had never feared Erik. Now, it seemed Erik was returning to her, albeit slowly. Christine had the strength in the end to follow her heart to a choice which suited her better, a mundane marriage to a boring man. She freed them both by leaving, and in so doing shocked Erik back to his right mind. At least Evelyn devoutly hoped this to be the case.

Peeking in, she saw that he was sleeping soundly at last. His long, gangling limbs were drawn in tightly, tense even in repose, and his face was flushed and damp. A lock of hair fell over his eyes and Evelyn reached in to brush it away. Erik stirred under her hand, murmuring in his sleep words of faint protest and fear. He flinched as if from a blow, and fresh tears flowed. Evelyn stroked his head gently, soothing him until the dream faded into something less disturbing.

She knew he had some good memories upon which to draw for his dreaming. Games they would play as children, pranks and japes that had set them both roaring with laughter and scrambling to hide from the wrath of one diva or another. The beauty of music, Erik's solace and escape from the time he first picked up a violin. Even memories of Christine, before the Vicomte, when he would guide and tutor the girl. Her voice was that of an angel, Evelyn had to admit, and it surely must have been a pleasure for Erik to have her sing for him every night.

Murmuring a lullaby, Evelyn drew the curtains once more and walked down to the lake. Erik would need food, and she needed to check on Meg and the girls. He would sleep for a time, and she would hurry. Her old friend would not wake alone and in the dark. His spirit was wounded and would take some time and care to mend, but mend it would. Then she would give thought to his future. Paris was not safe for him, now. His face was known, and the gendarmes would surely be out for his blood just as the mob had been tonight.

Perhaps America, she mused, poling the flat-bottomed boat across the lake. The land was vast, she had heard, and there were vast and desolate places where one could lose oneself, if one were so inclined. Then again, there were cities in the east which were said to be as large as Paris or larger. New York, and Chicago. Boston. There must be opera houses in such places, and perhaps in America they did not care so much about how one looked. She wondered if there was a need for a mistress of the ballet, and one young chorus girl.

Surprised at the way her thoughts were turning, Evelyn almost dropped the pole. Was she truly considering moving to the wilds of America? Of quitting the Opera Populare and Paris, the city of her birth? She was a woman of two score years and more, with a grown daughter and a career and….

She would not abandon Erik. She could not. If he went to America, she would go as well. She loved the crazy idiot, the little brother of her childhood, the haunted and tormented man he'd become. She even loved the Phantom, to some degree, even as she feared him. He would never believe it, and yet it was so.

Taking up the pole once more, Evelyn hugged this new knowledge to herself with a secret smile. She would just have to convince him.

End


End file.
